The Role of SEO And Sem in Business Online

Many journalists, writers and 'gurus' on the internet would have you believe that search engine optimization (SEO) is free. However this is not true. Whilst it need not be expensive, putting SEO into action in the right way will at the very least take time and you will need to put in a lot of effort. With that in mind, SEO done properly will deliver much greater benefits, consistently and over a a lot longer term than you will get through alternative search engine marketing (SEM) and other online advertising tactics.

When your site is getting 'free' visitors and traffic from organic search engine results, and links on other websites, there is less need (in many cases no need) to spend additional money on pay per click advertising. SEO done properly therefore, will help to cut costs. PPC and other marketing campaigns only deliver results whilst you are paying the provider. SEO on the other hand, works long after you stop investing in it, provided that it is content-centric SEO.

For many sites on tight budgets (perhaps all of them?), correct and effective SEO can make the difference between success and failure. Due to this, it really is worth spending some time and effort in the research and development stages of your website, to build SEO into the DNA of the site's design and architecture. This will pay for itself over and over again.

Including SEO from the beginning and as a core part of your online strategy will make everything else easier in the long run. When your web designers, your technical team, and your marketing department include SEO in all their decision making, the rewards you will reap from SEO will be many times greater than if you only try to implement SEO as an afterthought.

Below is a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of PPC and other search engine marketing efforts.

PPC Advantages:

* Can provide instant traffic from the second you launch the campaign

* Is easier to implement, with most search engines providing you platforms

* Is easier to manage because you can simply turn it off and on

PPC Disadvantages:

* Can get very expensive very quickly, particularly for expensive or popular keywords with low conversion rates

* In placements, the top positions will go to those advertisers paying the most

* There is not as much trust in PPC compared to organic results

* Once you stop paying, the traffic stops coming

SEO Advantages:

* Can be much cheaper to start

* The benefits are more longer term and sustainable

* Helps to increase trust for your website and brand

* The click through rate is often higher than with PPC

* The growth in your website traffic will be more natural, and reliant on your site's content

SEO Disadvantages:

* Getting the initial results can take a bit of time

* It takes brain power, and effort to do it right

* It comes with no guarantees.

Whilst it is true that SEO comes with no guarantees on your search engine placements, all SEO effort can *improve* your rankings, making certain that you get more traffic than you would have done without SEO. Finally, SEO has been proven to work over and over again, which is more than can be said for many alternative marketing strategies you will find people hawking on the internet.

James Winsoar is a specialising in both on-page and off-page search engine optimisation. He can help to improve your visibility online. Visit his website at or call James on 0115 9400 899.

Search engines enable paid advertising certainly to make money and marketer can instantly have their ads positioned on the results pages rather than hold off until it's discovered and identified by the search engine spiders, evaluated, and when it passes the algorithmic requirements.